Apple Harvest Time

Ah, the end of the summer from hell. Finally coolness and rain. We are supposed to average ten days a year in the over ninety-five F range. This year we had more than 32! But now we can turn to autumn, one of my favorite seasons. One reason is apples, particularly the apples from the Almata tree in the farm's yard. You will never see these in any store or roadside stand. Why? Well, they are rather tart, one might say. So tart that even I cannot eat a whole one out-of-hand. But baked! That is a different story.
The coarse-textured flesh holds up in any pie retaining enough body that one knows he/she is eating pie instead of mush. A mixed whole-wheat crust. a little brown sugar and crumbs, and the finest apple pie in the world is the result (IMHO). A plus is the Almata's startling watermelon-pink flesh. Pink apple pie anyone? Dark-pink apple sauce? We got enough this year to freeze some, so maybe we can enjoy this treasure beyond October.

End of fall

On the 5th of December, we hosted an open house for Brian Klipfel for people interested in masonry heaters. To our surprise and delight, over 20 people showed up, many staying for hours. People are interested in non-fossil fuel heating alternatives and certainly masonry heaters are one of the most efficient ways to do it. In the picture you can see some of our guests looking at pictures. Ted LaMastra is the guy in the back with a hat on. He did much of the masonry work for our foundation.
That was the last fling of fall. It started snowing and by midnight we had over five inches. The seasons have changed.

A Fall Harvest

When I was young, “hunting season” meant small game: rabbits, pheasant, ducks, squirrels. It certainly did not mean the white-tailed deer. Deer were so rare that seeing one was the outdoor thrill of the year. Today, I spot a roadkill carcass almost every mile on the way to work. Today, “Hunting season” in Eastern Pennsylvania means deer (and sometimes turkey) and little else. The annual deer hunt is so essential to the rural experience that the local schools are all closed on the Monday after Thanksgiving, the traditional “First Day” of buck season.
We see plenty of deer around the lodge, and see plenty of the damage that these four-legged locusts do to crops and the woods. But then, deer have become a crop of their own, like cattle or pigs. It’s just a little harder to kill them, that’s all. Still, we saw some success this fall during bow-and-arrow. We hope that our hunters will have even more success during the upcoming rifle season. Otherwise, we might be left with nothing but old trees, ferns and timothy hay.

The mixed days of October

This has to have been one of the wettest years in our memory (Sorry, California). The apples are huge (but with so much water, almost flavorless). The kernels on the corn are huge too, but the cobs from our sadly depleted field were small. It seemed as if it rained every weekend, making it hard to get work done on the house. Still, some progress continued. We had our "final" inspection, then spent two weekends fixing all the little details the inspectors wanted. One of those being a street number for emergency responders. We had a number by our gate, but decided to add our mailbox. Its numbers will be hard to miss.
Not much fall color this year. Again, too wet. This weekend it blew and blew and rained, and the leaves came down.
The corn is gone, replaced by gazing deer and a rye cover crop. We walked the field, picking up "cobby" corn to feed to Laura and Steve's chickens. We picked up plenty of golf balls too. once lost in the corn by golfers on the adjoining course, but easy to spot now with the corn down. After three years of injecting "Merit" into the ground, our hemlock appears Wooly Adelgia free and healthy. We will continue to hope.
The house is holding onto its temperature and remains comfortable. More amd more, this is our home.

New lower price

In other good news, Amazon is once more directly carrying The Golden Horn at a five dollar discount over the "list" price that PublishAmerica chose. So now you can get my first novel for "only" $19.95 once more and even get super-savings shipping. Such a deal! :-)

Window Treatments

Moldings around the windows of our passive solar home might seem to be low-priority, something we could work on at any time. But the approach of winter has given that project a higher status. We need to get the windows finished while there is still warm weather, and we need to have a way to install curtains to hold in night-time heat. The biggest challenge was the large, south overhead window in the central bay. We ended up making our own scaffolding, then spent two days staining, varnishing and painting. With the curtains installed, one window is finally ready for the cold season.

Hot Water, Part 1

Two major projects have remained for our house to be completely liveable: Power and hot water. But as Linda has pointed out. “I can live without electricity, but I won’t live without hot water.” So the hot water system became our next priority. We engaged Craig Edwards and Kirk Rohn of the Evergreen Group to do the installation. The hardest work was installing the posts and frame for the panel. We went with a large panel in hopes that it would be enough, even on cloudy, winter days, to avoid the need for a supplemental heat source. The panel is now in place, the tank is hooked up and the system is working with temperatures above 150 degrees F. on sunny days. Despite our lower upstairs water pressure, there was enough to enjoy my first shower on Saturday. We may have all the details complete by October.